Stephen King and Bev Vincent - Flight or Fright

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Flight or Fright Copyright 2018
Edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

Copyright Stephen King and Bev Vincent 2018

The right of Stephen King and Bev Vincent to be identified as the Editors of the Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Interior Design 2018 by Desert Isle Design, LLC

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 473 69159 9

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Introduction and story notes 2018, Stephen King.

Cargo by E. Michael Lewis first appeared in Shades of Darkness, Barbara and Christopher Rosen (eds.), Ash-Tree Press 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle first appeared in The Strand Magazine 1913.

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson first appeared in Alone by Night, Michael & Don Congdon (eds.) Ballantine Books 1961. Reprinted by permission of the authors estate and Don Congdon Associates, Inc.

The Flying Machine by Ambrose Bierce first appeared in Fantastic Fables, Putnam 1899.

Lucifer! by E.C. Tubb first appeared in Vision of Tomorrow #3 1969. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency and the Authors Estate.

The Fifth Category by Thomas Carlisle Bissell first appeared in The Normal School 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds by Dan Simmons first appeared in Omni Magazine 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Diablitos by Cody Goodfellow first appeared in A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, Scott R Jones (ed.), Martian Migraine Press 2017. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Air Raid by John Varley first appeared in Asimovs Science Fiction 1977. Reprinted by permission of the author.

You Are Released 2018, Joe Hill.

Warbirds by David J. Schow first appeared in A Dark and Deadly Valley, Mike Heffernan (ed.), Silverthought Press 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Flying Machine by Ray Bradbury first appeared in The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday & Company 1953. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc.

Zombies on a Plane by Bev Vincent first appeared in Dead Set, 23 House Publishing 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.

They Shall Not Grow Old by Roald Dahl first appeared in book form in Over To You: Ten Stories of Flyers and Flying, Reynal & Hitchcock 1946.Reprinted by permission of The Roald Dahl Story Company Limited.

Murder in the Air by Peter Tremayne first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes, Mike Ashley (ed.), Robinson 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Turbulence Expert 2018, Stephen King.

Falling 1981 by James L. Dickey. Published in Falling, May Day Sermon, and Other Poems, Wesleyan University Press. This Poem originally appeared in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of the authors estate and Raines & Raines.

Afterword 2018, Bev Vincent.

This anthology is dedicated to all the pilots, real and fictional, who landed their planes after a harrowing flight and brought their passengers home safely. The list includes:

Wilbur Wright

Chesley Sullenberger

Tammie Jo Shults

Vernon Demerest

Robert Pearson

Eric Gennotte

Tim Lancaster

Min-Huan Ho

Eric Moody

Peter Burkill

Bryce McCormick

Robert Schornstheimer

Richard Champion de Crespigny

Robert Pich

Brian Engle

Ted Striker

Contents

A re there people in this modern, technology-driven world who enjoy flying? Hard as it might be to believe, Im sure there are. Pilots do, most children do (although not babies; the changes in air pressure messes them up), assorted aeronautical enthusiasts do, but thats about it. For the rest of us, commercial air travel has all the charm and excitement of a colorectal exam. Modern airports tend to be overcrowded zoos where patience and ordinary courtesy are tested to the breaking point. Flights are delayed, flights are canceled, luggage is tossed around like beanbags, and on many occasions does not arrive with passengers who desperately desire clean shirts or even just one set of fresh underwear.

If you have an early morning flight, God help you. It means rolling out of bed at four in the morning so you can go through a check-in and boarding process as convoluted and tension-inducing as getting out of a small and corrupt South American country in 1954. Do you have a photo ID? Have you made sure your shampoo and conditioner are in small plastic see-thru bottles? Are you prepared to lose your shoes and have your various electronic gadgets irradiated? Are you sure nobody else packed your luggage, or had access to it? Are you ready to undergo a full body scan, and perhaps a pat-down of your naughty bits for good measure? Yes? Good. But you still may discover that your flight has been overbooked, delayed by mechanical or weather issues, perhaps canceled because of a computer meltdown. Also, heaven help you if youre flying standby; you might have better luck buying a lottery scratch ticket.

You surmount these hurdles so you can enter what one of the contributors to this anthology refers to as a howling shell of death. Isnt that a bit over the top, you might ask, not to mention contrary to fact? Granted. Airliners rarely flame out (although weve all seen unsettling cell phone footage of engines belching fire at 30,000 feet), and flying rarely results in death (statistics say youre more likely to be killed crossing the street, especially if youre a damn fool peering at your cell phone while you do it). Yet you are entering what is basically a tube filled with oxygen and sitting atop tons of highly flammable jet fuel.

Once your tube of metal and plastic is sealed up (likegulp!a coffin) and leaving the runway, trailing its dwindling shadow behind it, only one thing is sure, a thing so positive it is beyond statistics: you will come down. Gravity demands it. The only question is where and why and in how many pieces, one being the ideal. If the reunion with mother earth is on a mile of concrete (hopefully at your destination, but any mile of paved surface will do in a pinch), all is well. If not, your statistical chances of survival plummet rapidly. That, too, is a statistical fact, and one even the most seasoned air travelers must contemplate when their flight runs into clear air turbulence at 30,000 feet.